Saturday, June 15, 2013

Dueling was amazingly popular in the United States from
the country’s birth until about the 1860s. Before taking office, Andrew
Jackson is thought to have fought in more than one hundred duels,
almost all with pistols, and lived to tell the tale. One book, British Dueling Pistols,
by John Atkinson, details that only some 6% of pistol duels ended in
fatalities. However, the practice of firing away was not universally
accepted.

National anthem composer Francis Scott Key, naval hero Steven Decatur,
and the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton all died from
pistol shots received in duels. Hamilton, who had fought in 11 previous
honor trials, fired first and into the air while then-Vice President
Aaron Burr returned fire and mortally wounded the man who now graces the
$10 bill. Celebrated Russian author Alexander Pushkin, survivor of 29
previous duels before being killed in his 30th, is another example of
how the practice of ‘shooting away’ was not universally followed.

By the 1860s, dueling had largely been regulated away but this did
not stop it from becoming a sport in the 1906 and 1912 Olympics—with the
shooters firing at mannequins dressed in frock coats. In most cases,
the ‘high-noon’ gunfights of the Wild West were more Hollywood than the
real deal although notable exceptions would have absolutely shattered the gentlemen of the 1700s sensibilities.

Jurors in the James “Whitey” Bulger trial were presented with photos
of the notorious gangster’s massive collection of firearms that included
six machineguns.

James “Whitey” Bulger

Bugler, now 83, was a leading organized crime figure in Boston,
Massachusetts. Known for his Robin-Hood-style of social banditry, he was
also the mastermind of numerous protection rackets, alleged murders and
even a stoolie for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But “Whitey”
fled Boston in 1994 after receiving a tip from his former FBI handler
and had been on the run until his 2011 capture in Santa Monica,
California.

After Bulger’s arrest, authorities said they found about $800,000 in
cash and more than 30 guns in his apartment. Retired state police Col.
Thomas Foley identified weapons found during a 2000 investigation that
included six machineguns and multiple revolvers and automatic pistols.

Sending teenage offenders to juvenile hall makes them 13 percentage
points less likely to finish high school and 22 percentage points more
likely to be imprisoned as adults.

That's the finding of a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Anna Aizer and Joseph Doyle.

The authors looked at defendants in
Chicago juvenile courts between 1991 and 2006. Offenders were randomly
placed in front of different judges, some of whom were more likely to
send defendants to jail than others.

The authors suggest sending fewer
teenagers to jail and subjecting more to non-custodial punishments, such
as curfews and electronic monitoring, that won't interfere with them
attending school and becoming productive adults.

Jailing teenagers is expensive — $88,000 a year on average, with
total national expenditure of $6 billion annually. If this study is
right, cutting those costs would save taxpayers money, reduce crime, and
allow more teenagers to grow up into productive and well-adjusted
adults.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Family members arrive after four people were found dead inside A K Home
Health Care, located inside the Cherokee Place Business Incubator, on
Thursday, June 13, 2013. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

STL Today

The operator of a home health care business gunned down three people
who worked there — including his business partner — Thursday afternoon
before taking his own life, police and others said.

The shots were
fired about 1:40 p.m. at A K Home Health Care in the Cherokee Place
Business Incubator at 2715 Cherokee Street, police say.

Officers recovered a semiautomatic handgun at the crime scene.

Police identified the gunman as Ahmed Dirir, 59, of the 900 block of Carr Avenue.The
victims were Khadra Muse, 44, of Indian Circle Drive in Olivette;
Seaeed Abdulla, 29, of the 700 block of Cole Street; and Bernice
Solomon-Redd, 54, of the 2400 block of Ridge Avenue in East St. Louis.

St.
Louis Police Capt. Michael Sack said surveillance video showed the
shooter opened fire after having a brief argument with others inside the
business.

“We don’t know if this is a prior thing that carried over,” Sack said.

Sack said the victims all appeared to have connections to the health care business. Dirir and Muse are listed in public records as owners.

Police
sources and relatives at the scene said Abdulla was married to Dirir’s
step-daughter and that Muse and Abdulla were also related by marriage.

An Assumption College campus police official accidentally shot himself
in the foot this morning while at a shooting range in Holden.

Deputy Chief Keith S. Hough, 55, received a bullet wound to his
right foot when his handgun went off as he was placing it in his
holster, according to District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.'s office,
which investigated the 8 a.m. shooting.

It makes you wonder about the La Pierre theory - the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

There are a number of odd things about the various pictures of George Z. These were supposedly taken the day after the famous killing. Is it reasonable to think the blood on the back of his head would still be there the day after?

And how about the difference between the nose in that photo on the left and the one I posted the other day - you know the one the gun-rights commenters all defended as being unenhanced?

But, naturally, the pot smoking of Trayvon Martin makes him a dangerous drug addict. This according to the gun-rights fanatics who usually support marijuana reform.

The Pew Research Center's latest survey
on gun control this week provided a familiar profile of the typical gun
owner in the United States: adult, white and male. That profile differs
greatly from the makeup of the country, according to Pew. White men
represent just a third of the U.S. population, but about 60 percent of
adults with guns in America today are white men.

This is where we get those carefully worded responses that Kurt likes so much. Gun-rights supporters, in an attempt to give legitimacy to their fanatical obsession, often say, "we're seeing more women," or "we're seeing more minorities."

Some people go further.

And despite Pew's findings, gun groups today say that the demographics
of gun owners are finally starting to change. Dudley Brown, the
executive director of both the National Association for Gun Rights and
the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a local gun rights group, says he has
recently seen an uptick in membership among Hispanic communities and
among women. In concealed-carry classes hosted by the Rocky Mountain Gun
Owners, he says the male-female split has become 50-50.

Now that's the spirit. Claim there's now a 50-50 gender balance. That means with all the blacks and Hispanics, white males are actually in the minority.

What's your opinion? Why do you think gun-rights folks are trying so hard to obscure the fact that it's still a man's world, as depicted in the photo above?

A 15-year-old boy is dead after being shot with a pellet gun at a friend's house in central Pennsylvania.Investigators say the shooting of Ty Yonkin
in Clinton County on Tuesday afternoon appears to be an accident and
isn't considered suspicious. An autopsy is scheduled Wednesday in
State College.Yonkin was at a friend's home in Porter Township when the shooting
happened. It wasn't immediately clear how he was shot and the death is
under investigation by Pennsylvania State Police and the
coroner's office.

This brings up a question. Do pellet-gun and BB-gun and air-soft gun deaths and injuries count? Greg loves to quote statistics when attempting to downplay the situation by limiting the number to deaths by firearms only. I pointed out that the injuries should count too as well as the cases in which a kid does the shooting and is not injured himself.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The family of a charming young teenage boy had pictures of their adorable young child circulated by the “news” media after he was brutally shot to death by a ruthless wannabe vigilante.

Then it came out that the teenager was actually a 6-foot-two-inch
football player with a history of violence and gang connections who had
pounded the block-watch captain’s head into the pavement until he was
bleeding and nearly unconscious.

The survivor, on trial for his life, caught a tough break from a circuit-court judge in pre-trial motions the other day.

It turns out that prosecutors seeking to convict George Zimmerman for (the
merciless cold-hearted vigilante murder of poor little Trayvon)
(defending himself against the brutal life-threatening assault by
Trayvon Martin) (you pick), will be able to suppress all evidence
showing the attacker’s controversial school records, previous drug use,
history of prior fights, ownership of removable gold-tooth caps, or any
text messages and photos found on Martin’s cell phone, which defense
attorney Mark O’Mara has seen. A delay in the proceedings was also
denied. Trial is set for June 10 2013.

If you think the nation’s diligent media turned the Jody Arias thing into a circus, you ain’t seen nothin’.

What do you think about the suppression of that "evidence?" Is it right for the judge to have ruled so?

What about the sarcastic bias of the writing by Alan Korwin? Doesn't that and the incredible photo more than make up for the media's protrayal of Trayvon as an innocent youth?

Firearms ownership is on the rise in NSW with the number of new gun
permits more than doubling in the past decade, the Greens say.

In
2002, 29,618 permits were issued by the NSW firearms registry, and had
jumped to 66,460 in 2012, figures released by NSW Greens justice
spokesman David Shoebridge show.

He says the government and
opposition are part of the problem due to their political binds to the
Shooters Party, which holds the balance of power in the state's upper
house.

"The former Labor government created the pro-gun Game
Council in a 2002 deal with Shooters MPs and Barry O'Farrell has
continued the deals with hunting in National Parks," Mr Shoebridge said
in a statement.

"Unless we start tightening up the rules to get a
firearm, we risk losing the gun control advances achieved in the wake of
the Port Arthur tragedy."

People across NSW wanted politicians to
"stand up to the gun lobby and work to control gun numbers" as more
legal firearms in the state provides greater opportunity for criminals
to steal guns, Mr Shoebridge said.

Oh, I wish I had an Australian Dollar for every time one of the gun-rights fanatics told us guns were banned in Australia. What is it that makes the pro-gun folks think they can make up stuff like that?

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

In his letter, Bornman thanked members of Congress for following the NRA's lobbying efforts against the background check bill.

“I, along with tens of thousands of other criminals, couldn’t do what we do without you," Bornman wrote.

In a letter published in The Courant last Thursday, Bornman also wrote:

As a lifelong career criminal, although I no longer enjoy the
right to keep and bear arms, I’d like to take a moment to express my
appreciation to the National Rifle Association for nonetheless
protecting my ability to easily obtain them through its opposition to
universal background checks.

Upon release in a few years from my
current federal sentence on bank robbery and weapons charges, I fully
anticipate being able to stop at a gun show on my way home to
Connecticut — where new laws have made it nearly impossible for a felon
to readily purchase guns or ammunition — in order to buy some with which
to resume my criminal activities.

The death toll from a mass shooting in California rose to five on
Sunday after a 26-year-old woman seriously wounded during the gun
rampage died in hospital, authorities said.

Marcela Franco was
caught in a hail of bullets that also claimed the life of her father
Carlos during the shooting on Friday in the upmarket beach resort of
Santa Monica carried out by a gunman clad in black and wearing body
armour.

Local media reports have identified the gunman as John
Zawahri, who was due to turn 24 on Saturday. The gunman was shot and
killed by police after being cornered in the library of Santa Monica
College.

Police
have still not pinpointed a motive for the killings. The carnage began
on Friday when a house was set on fire in Santa Monica. Police later
found the bodies of Zawahri's father and brother inside.

The
heavily armed gunman, carrying some 1,300 rounds of ammunition, then
headed to Santa Monica College, where he fired indiscriminately at
students before eventually being shot dead by police.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Ever since George Zimmerman was charged in April 2012 with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a story that sparked a firestorm of debate over racial tensions, law enforcement, and >gun regulations has mostly faded from the headlines. Now it returns, with Zimmerman's trial opening on Monday in Sanford, Florida.
The case hinges on some complex and controversial questions; below are
several key aspects worth considering. Also see our collection of primary documents and videos from the case for additional background.Does Zimmerman's story add up? A written statement
and police video released last June, in which Zimmerman reenacts the
deadly altercation for investigators at the scene, raised questions
about Zimmerman's story in more ways than one. He seemed to suffer from
some peculiar memory loss that night regarding a street in his
neighborhood of many years, and his description of the confrontation did
not jibe with a prior written statement that he'd given police. More details here.

A New Jersey police officer is being held on $1
million bail after he was charged with shooting and killing a man on a
Maryland highway in an alleged road rage incident.

Forty-year-old Joseph Walker, a sworn
officer with the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, was charged with
second degree murder and manslaughter after a shooting 36-year-old
Joseph Harvey, Jr. Saturday on an off-ramp on Interstate 97 near
Millersville, according to Maryland State Police.

Police say the off-duty officer
reportedly got into an argument with Harvey shortly after 8:30 p.m.
while both men were driving on the interstate in Anne Arundel County,
Maryland. Investigators say both men pulled over on the shoulder of the
highway. Harvey got out of his car, along with his passenger, and
starting walking towards Walker’s minivan.

The source of the intelligence leaks that revealed the National Security Agency's massive domestic surveillance program last week was identified on Sunday by the Guardian and Washington Post
as Edward Snowden, a soft-spoken 29-year-old former technical assistant
for the CIA and current employee of NSA defense contractor Booz Allen
Hamilton.Snowden, a Hawaii resident who was interviewed by the U.K. newspaper in his hotel room in Hong Kong where he is hiding, said he has no regrets about going public—even if he never sees his family again."I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things,"
Snowden said. "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do
and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or
live under ... I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to
destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around
the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly
building."In a statement, Booz Allen confirmed Snowden "has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months":

News reports that this individual has claimed to have
leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action
represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of
our firm. We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their
investigation of this matter.

The White House declined to comment on the identification of the NSA leaker, according to a press pool report.Snowden said he decided to leave his family, girlfriend and a
comfortable, $200,000-a-year salary behind, and flew to Hong Kong on May
20. He said he chose China because "they have a spirited commitment to
free speech and the right of political dissent."

Investigators trying to determine why Zawahri planned the shooting spree focused on a deadly act of domestic violence that touched off the mayhem.

Police said he fatally shot his
father and older brother at a home that went up in flames before taking
the violence to the streets, which lasted just a matter of minutes until
he was shot to death in a chaotic scene at the Santa Monica College library by police.

Authorities did not immediately name the shooter or the two men found
dead in the house because next of kin was out of the country and hadn't
been notified. That changed Sunday after Zawahri's mother cut her trip
short and came back to the country.

Sgt. Richard Lewis, a police spokesman, said she was being
interviewed by investigators, who were hoping she could help provide
clues about what triggered the violence.

"A big piece of the puzzle just came home," he said.

The killing began as a domestic violence incident when Zawahri killed
his father, Samir, 55, and brother, Christopher, 24, in their home near
Interstate 10 in a working-class part of town a few miles from the
beachside attractions that draw tourists year-round.

The gunman, carrying a duffel back with him with 1,300 rounds of
ammo, set the house ablaze, fired shots in the neighborhood and took his
rampage on the road.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

It turns out the ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barrack
Obama, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his gun control group
Mayors Against Illegal Guns last month had nothing to do with guns or gun control
after all. It appears instead that the motive was something which
sounds like the plot of a made for TV movie featured on Lifetime.
Apparently the tainted letters were part of one woman’s elaborate scheme
to ruin her husband’s life. And apparently someone has let the cat out
of the bag.

Shannon Guess Richardson, a fiery red-head who had a small role in the series "The Walking Dead,”
was arrested Friday and charged with mailing a threatening
communication to the President of the United States. According to a
report by KSLA 12,
she is being held in a Texarkana, Texas, jail under the custody of U.S.
Marshals, where she is scheduled for a detention hearing next Friday
afternoon. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

Associated Press/Pat Sullivan - In this Sunday, May 19, 2013, photo, Dan
Blackford, right, shows Rory Strain, 12, how to hold a shotgun at a
shooting range Sunday, May 19, 2013, in Houston. Strain lives in
the northwest Houston community of Oak Forest, the first residential
area being trained and equipped by a nonprofit that is giving away free
shotguns to single women and neighborhoods with high crime rates. (AP
Photo/Pat Sullivan)

Kyle Coplen, the project's
29-year-old founder said his group expects to train at least 50 Oak
Forest residents and put up signs saying the neighborhood is armed.

"When we have a crime wave, we
don't just say let's just increase police and that's all we do. We do
multiple things. I see this as one aspect of what we can do," said
Coplen, who graduated from the University of Houston with a master's
degree in public administration.

It costs the organization about $300 to arm and train an individual
and about $20,000 for an entire neighborhood. All costs are paid through
donations, said Coplen, though he declined to say how much his
organization has raised so far.

While some residents in the neighborhood are supportive, several officials have mixed feelings about it.

Pro-gun folks don't seem to consider the downside of more guns in homes. Not only will accidents go up, but so will theft. Some of these guns will end up in criminal hands.

Plus, when these shotguns start protecting their owners and the owners' property, unnecessary DGUs will take place. People will be hurt and killed who don't deserve it.

David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and management at the
Harvard School of Public Health who has written about firearms and
health, said studies suggesting gun ownership deters crime have been
refuted by many others that say the opposite.

"Mostly what guns seem to do is make situations more lethal because
most crime has nothing to do with guns," he said. "When there is a gun
in the mix, there is much more likely to be somebody dying or somebody
incredibly hurt."

Associated Press/Damian Dovarganes - A firefighter walks past a car with
bullet holes across a home that caught fire in Santa Monica, Calif.
Friday, June 7, 2013. Two people were found dead Friday in a burned
home near the school, where someone sprayed a street corner with
gunfire, wounding at least three people, authorities said. (AP
Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The gunman, dressed all in black and carrying a semi-automatic rifle, walked calmly through the Santa Monica College
campus after killing his father, brother at their home and another man
near the school, authorities said. He would kill a woman outside the
library moments later, before dying from police gunfire.

Trena Johnson, a longtime
administrative assistant working in the dean's office, heard gunfire and
looked out the window around noon Friday. Students were jumping out of
windows of nearby buildings to get away. A man in black with a "very
large gun" shot a woman in the head outside the library.

The violence, which lasted little more than 10 minutes, started about
a mile away when the gunman began shooting at a house, and it caught on
fire. Two bodies were later found inside, police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said.Two officials told The Associated Press that the killings began as a
domestic violence incident and the victims in the home were the gunman's
father and brother. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.The gunman also fired on police cars, bystanders and pedestrians, police said.College employee Joe Orcutt was in the lot and said the gunman looked
calm and composed as he fired at him. Orcutt jumped out of the way."He's just standing there, like he's modeling for some ammo
magazine," Orcutt said, "seeing who he could shoot, one bullet at a
time, like target practice."